Technical Field
Example embodiments of the present invention generally relate to an image processing apparatus, image processing method, and an image processing program stored in a recording medium.
Background Art
In digital printing apparatuses of electrophotography or ink-jet printing, stability in color output is demanded when hundreds or thousands of outputs are continuously performed. In particular, color reproduction needs to be stably managed in a case where similar documents with small changes in contents per a couple of pages are continuously printed or in a case where printing is performed concurrently at different sites.
However, compared with full-scale commercial printing, an operating environment in which digital document printers are used is not always strictly managed. Moreover, loads caused by printing of various types of documents in a mixed manner are significant, and the amount of the supplied toner or ink or the state of devices changes from moment to moment.
For this reason, in order to achieve stable management of color reproduction with a certain level strictness, it is necessary to stop the machines and perform calibration on a periodical basis.
On the other hand, the data given by a customer includes printing characteristic data of an output device, called color profiles, and colors to be reproduced by device-specific RGB (red, green, blue) image data or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) image data are often defined by those color profiles.
Each of the color profiles is adjusted depending on the state of device, the type of used media, and the purpose of printing.
Generally, a spectrophotometric colorimeter or RGB scanner is used as a colorimeter device that measures the color of an output image.